


The Unexpected Domestic Benefits of Living With a Ninja-SEAL

by imaginary_iby



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: A Smidge of Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 03:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_iby/pseuds/imaginary_iby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Danny brings home a new laptop, connecting to the internet turns out to be harder than expected - even for a man with goofy thumbs.  Luckily, Steve's skills are many and varied.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unexpected Domestic Benefits of Living With a Ninja-SEAL

**Author's Note:**

> I recently bought a new laptop. It was... an adventure in patience.

The house looks like the worst kind of crime scene - which is really saying something, considering just how much criminal activity 2727 Piikoi has seen: Molotov cocktails, CIA microfiches, semi-automatic weapons fire - hell, even some good old fashioned B&E.

But not this. Never anything like this.

A trail of evidence winds throughout the house: an empty liquor glass on the kitchen bench; angrily toed off shoes, one halfway up the stairs, the other kicked under the couch; torn chunks of Styrofoam packing, scattered all over the dining room table. 

What’s most incriminating is the sea of crumpled documents spread out across the floor. They rest in a circular pattern, as though someone had sat, cross-legged, and built themselves a cage of paperwork.

Steve’s trained eye collates it all, drinks in the scene. It doesn’t take long to piece together just what kind of mayhem his ill partner has managed to achieve. Impressive, really, since it’s only been seven hours since Steve last saw him, ushering him into the house with a, “Get in bed and stay there.” 

Said partner is currently little more than a disgusting bag of germs, and while Steve might be doomed – even sick, Danny is stupidly kissable - it’s still his job as task force leader to give Chin and Kono a fighting chance.

Following the trail, he comes across the evidential pièce de résistance: a large white box sat atop his father’s desk. The box makes it readily apparent that instead of following orders, (ha!) Danny had decided to forego his enforced downtime and instead go shopping for a new laptop. 

Bullet holes and keyboards don’t mix well, it turns out.

Indeed, the crumpled documents are angrily scrunched instruction manuals. The liquor glass, empty save for a puddle of melted ice, is the last respite of a man prone to impatience and lacking in computer skills. And as for the _shoes_ , well, the shoes are always the first to go whenever Danny gets home in a mood. 

With crystal clarity, Steve can picture him setting up shop beside the modem, staring gormlessly at Ethernet cables and wasting his life away on hold with tech support. For longer than he cares to admit, he contemplates retreating to HQ, dimming the lights and spending the night on the couch. There’ll be no living with Danny tonight, not after a technical tirade.

Sighing softly, he screws his courage to the sticking place. For better or for worse, or some such bullshit. “Danno, I’m home.”

There’s a thump, then a grumble, followed by a crash and a stream of profanities. Eventually, Danny appears at the top of the stairs. “Hey babe,” he calls, before proceeding to cough up a lung. 

It’s obvious that he’s gotten worse, a sickly concoction of sweat and misery. His hair is a mess, beleaguered blond strands oddly greasy, as though the skin beneath is fever-plagued.

Everything about him is crinkled and pathetic, and he slumps forward, braces his weight against the banister. The task of standing is obviously too much, but Steve knows him well enough to know that he’ll go down fighting.

Something about seeing Danny so sapped of energy evokes a soft, simmering sadness in Steve’s chest. Bullet wounds and tourniquets he can handle, but coming home to a partner with the flu is weirdly pedestrian.

He begins to make his way upstairs, boots falling in such a way so as to avoid the creaky steps – old habits die hard. By the time he makes it to Danny’s side, Danny is draped over the banister, arms folded on the wooden beam and cheek pillowed against his elbow.

Faced with such abject misery, Steve follows suit, bending himself over awkwardly and mirroring Danny’s pose. “You look like shit,” he says, idly scratching an itch on his wrist by brushing his stubble against it.

Danny scowls, fiery and unimpressed, a more effective ‘fuck you’ than any croaky flu-riddled rant, and Steve can’t help but think, _oh yeah, yes, this is it, this is why I love you._ Because even sick, there’s not a hope in hell that Danny’s going to put up with any bullshit, least of all from him. 

Plan in place, he carries on. “You also smell really bad. Get your ass in the shower.”

His words have the desired effect almost immediately: Danny is up off the banister like a scolded flea, indignation putting colour in his cheeks better than any dose of Sudafed. He moves with the kind of whirlwind energy that defines him, shoves his finger in Steve’s face as he says, “Don’t you tell me what to do, you- you…” he trails off, frowns, looks down at himself and then up at Steve. “Huh.”

Steve smirks. “Yup.” He pops the p, having spent too much time with Gracie – ‘too much’ being just the right amount, of course.

“Huh,” Danny says again, clearly experiencing some kind of epiphany. “You actually just made me feel better by pissing me off.”

Steve tries not to feel too smug – if there’s one thing Danny enjoys, it’s a good snit. Well, that and fucking on the couch. 

Smugness melts into arousal the second Danny starts to stretch, the restorative energy of irritation flowing through his veins like a life-blood. It’s as though he’s manually easing himself from the flu’s clutches, rolling his shoulders experimentally and shifting and twisting. He finishes off by cracking his spine, arching his back with a satisfied groan once all the kinks have been worked out.

The sight is, quite frankly, more than Steve can take. He crowds into Danny’s space, nips kisses over blond stubble before bumping their noses together. He’s about to nuzzle in for a kiss when Danny shifts, rocks back onto his heels, his brow creased with affection and worry.

“You schmuck,” Danny says, as though talking to an idiot of the highest order. He softens the blow with a quick kiss to Steve’s pulse-point. “What am I going to do with you. You shouldn’t kiss me, you’ll get sick.” 

Puffs of germy breath smack Steve straight in the face, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s been with Danny long enough to know that the harder Danny loves him, the sweeter and the crankier Danny becomes. It shouldn’t work, it barely even makes sense, but Steve _gets_ it, knows he’s doing something right when Danny looks at him fondly, calls him every name under the sun.

Steve smiles, stoops a little and nuzzles in again. “I don’t care,” he says. They kiss soft and slow and then warm and rough, but by the time he has them backed against the bedroom door, Danny is outright gasping for breath. And not in a good way.

“Sorry, sorry,” Steve offers, backing off a little and letting Danny breathe.

“S’alright. Just my stupid schnoz. It’s purely decorative, at the moment.”

Steve decides that now isn’t the time to bring up Danny’s snoring problem, choosing instead to bite his tongue and open the door. They tumble into the bedroom, and, ah, yes. There it is, the beast itself.

Seeing it now, in the flesh – or the aluminium, as they case may be – he can’t hold in the mocking any longer.

“An Apple?” he asks. “Seriously, you couldn’t set up a Mac?”

Danny pinches him on the ass – more, Steve suspects, just because he can get away with it. “Do not mock me, Steven,” he commands, with just the barest hint of a British lilt. 

Steve adds this to the pile of things he’ll keep to himself – hey, he might enjoy riling Danny up, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid.

It’s as though the mere sight of the laptop undoes all of his earlier hard-work - Danny flops onto the bed, despondent once more, his cold having re-surfaced in the blink of an eye.

Sighing, Steve shifts to the other side of the room, stroking a finger along the arch of Danny’s naked foot. It doesn’t take long to undress, economical movements only briefly derailing when he has to adjust himself, suddenly half-hard. He can’t really help it: Danny is inelegantly sprawled across the bed, his scruffy face half buried in pillows, a heavily-lidded eye tracking Steve as he moves about the room. The weight of that lazy gaze, somehow innocent and yet still sexual, is too much.

“Seriously,” Steve begins, trying to ignore the way clean cool boxers feels against his cock. “Have a shower, you’ll feel better. I’ll set your computer up, have it ready for you by the time you’re done.”

With a groan, Danny heaves himself out of bed, shuffling towards the door. He shucks what little he was wearing as he goes, chicken-legs on display – pale, hairy, endearingly slight, so different to the muscle of his upper body. 

“It amuses me that you think it’s that easy,” he throws over his shoulder, heading down the hall. “Alright, have at it, do your worst.”

As a matter of fact, it doesn’t take long for Steve to set things up. It’s not Danny’s fault, really, that he had so much difficulty. Goofy thumbs don’t cooperate well with multiple layers of wireless security – Naval Intelligence tends to be fussy that way. In his tipsier moments, Danny likes to eyeball the kitchen ceiling, shake his fist and mumble about ‘the government’ until Steve cracks and laughs himself silly. No amount of pointing out that Danny works for a state-level investigative task-force will shut him up.

By the time Danny wanders back into the bedroom, Steve’s already sorting family photos into folders. They’ve never openly settled the three-minute-shower dispute, but in his heart of hearts, he knows that he’s lost. It doesn’t bug him nearly as much as it used to. Truth is, he can only smile - the sight of Danny, all pruned and rosy red, is weirdly cute.

As soon as Danny sees that the laptop is up and running, any trace of cuteness fades away, replaced instantly by deep suspicion. He scoots back against the headboard, hips and elbows and knees clanking against Steve’s until they’re side by side.

Never having quite outgrown the ‘look-but-don’t-touch’ phase, he grabs the laptop, dragging it to rest across the expanse of their laps. “Just how much grubby SEAL mojo did you get all over my shiny new laptop?”

Steve huffs, because god, it’s a good thing Danny’s pretty. “Just shut up and play scrabble already.”


End file.
